these bishops looked to the Pope; and St.
Avitus expressed every bishop's strongest conviction when he said, writing
in the name of them all, "In the case of other bishops, if there be any
lapse it may be restored; but if the Pope of Rome is endangered, not one
bishop, but the episcopate itself will seem to be shaken".

When the western emperor was suppressed the Pope became locally subject for
about fourteen years to the Arian Odoacer, and then for a full generation
to the Arian Theodorick. The latter soon found, by a calculation of
interest, that the only way to rule Italy and the adjoining territories
which his conquering arms had attached to Italy was by maintaining civil
justice and equality among all his subjects. He took two of the noblest
Romans, Boethius and Cassiodorus, for his friends and counsellors, and in
the letters of the latter, from about the year 500 to the end of
Theodorick's reign, we possess most valuable information as to the way in
which Theodorick governed. Odoacer would seem likewise, during the years of
his government until he was shut up in Ravenna, to have followed a like
policy. But that the position of the Pope under Odoacer and Theodorick was
one of great difficulty and delicacy no one can doubt. Gelasius speaks of
his having had to resist Odoacer "by God's help, when he enjoined things
not to be done".[110] And in 526 Pope John I. paid with his life, in the
dungeon of Ravenna, the penalty for not having satisfied the Arian
exactions of Theodorick in the eastern embassy imposed upon him.

I mention these things very summarily, having already given them with more
or less detail, but I must needs recur to them because, in weighing the
transactions which the schism of Acacius brought about, it is essential to
bear in mind throughout the embarrassed and subject political situation in
which all the Popes concerned with that schism found themselves.

Within seven years after the western emperor had been suppressed, and the
overlordship of the East been acknowledged by the Roman senate as well as
the Teuton conqueror, what happened?

A bishop of Constantinople, as able and popular as he was unscrupulous, had
established a mental domination over the eastern emperor Zeno. He reigned
in the utmost sacerdotal pomp at Constantinople; he beheld Old Rome sunk
legally to the mere rank of a municipal city, and the See of St. Peter in
it subject to an Arian of barbaric blood. He thought the time was com